i recently joined friend jonathan stark on his podcast "ditching hourly" where he typically talks about business strategies and best practices for helping freelancers and consultants escape hourly billing. and we talked about that world of business quite a bit, including how people often copy the wrong parts of the successes they've seen.but as a self-published digital author himself, jonathan also wanted to grill me on exactly how we launched the tiny mba and sold thousands of copies without a publishing deal...and without boxes of books sitting in my basement.so i indulged him!in this episode, you're going to hear my answers to jonathan's questions about:why we decided to make the tiny mba a physical, printed book in the first placehow and why we picked our printing and distribution partner (and why it's not amazon)and jonathan and i riff on my new "secret weapon" for building pre-launch momentum, and why it created a 90% conversion rate and some of the fastest sales i've ever seen.i also learned that jonathan went to music school, and the comparison he draws in the first few moments between learning both business and music through style practices still has me thinking about it weeks later!i'm excited to see jonathan ship his first paperback book in the future, and if you're inspired to consider self-publishing a print book, i hope the stories and suggestions in this episode help you too.with that, let's get into my conversation with jonathan stark from the ditching hourly podcast. ready? here we go. transcript